So why aren't scientists discovering new things? Have we already discovered all the transformative and crucial things?
Not necessarily. Piper, for example, believes that it's possible the slowdown is not an inevitable natural law, but a result of policy choices.
"The way we hand out scientific grants is flawed," she explained. "Despite the record level of funding, we know that visionaries with transformative ideas — like Katalin Karikó, who did crucial early work to invent mRNA vaccines — struggled for years to get grant money. And getting money requires jumping through a growing number of hoops — many leading scientists now spend 50 percent of their time writing grant proposals so they can spend the other 50 percent ... doing science."
Nowadays, scientists have to publish to keep their jobs. "Saying that the science slowdown is inevitable because our predecessors already grabbed all the good ideas might blind us to the possibility that science is slowing down because we're actively mismanaging it, directing researchers away from the best uses of their time and the most crucial research and toward small incremental papers that keep funders — and tenure review committees — happy," Piper added.
Disruptive papers often correlate with innovations that increase productivity, improve quality of life, raise wages, and save lives. Some have even speculated that the drop in productivity and wages in the US is driven by the slowing of scientific innovation. Not to mention there's less content for memes!
If you want to see more, check out Bored Panda's earlier article on 'Science is Fun.'
